Exhibition Review – Page 3

July 10, 2025July 10, 2025

Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface at Fou Gallery

A painting on a wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation image of Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface, 2025. Photograph by Ken Lee

When Naomi Okubo decides to begin working on one of her enthralling paintings, there is a multistep process that far proceeds the brush gracing the canvas. The careful preparation of materials, digital and physical, allow Okubo to consolidate her thoughts and produce an organic depiction of her personal experience. The authenticity with which this is depicted is a result of the forethought and boundless introspection that she imposes upon herself. It is important to note that the artworks selected for the exhibition Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface currently on view at Fou Gallery, weave a narrative fabric that chronologizes Okubo’s development as a visual artist.

July 9, 2025July 7, 2025

Phantom Attractions at Astor Weeks

Zoe Beloff, *Model for Drive-In Dreamland by Albert Grass (c. 1945)*, 2012, Wood, paint, plexiglass, found objects, 67 × 27 ⁵⁄₁₆ × 19 ³⁄₈ inches, 170 x 70 x 48.5 cm., photo courtesy the artist and Astor Weeks

When my mother was very old, I wanted to tell her what it was like to be in the art world. I said, “It is a little like joining the carnival.” While not affording her much comfort, I tried to convey the disorderly balancing act of the ridiculous and the transcendent, the illusory and the real, the sincere and the piratical. I wanted to suggest a midway of precarious lives, thrill rides, and a dubious game of chance.

July 8, 2025July 7, 2025

Why Black Art Is Rarely Just Abstract

Algernon Miller’s work bends space, time, and expectations, redefining what abstraction means when history isn’t optional

*Algernon Miller Afrofuturism and Beyond*, Installation view, courtesy of Ethan Cohen Gallery

I met Algernon Miller the way I tend to meet people in the art world: by asking too many earnest questions at a panel. That day, at a Mel Edwards talk at Hauser & Wirth, I caught a smile from the soft-spoken man next to me. We chatted and clicked. Two native New Yorkers—he from Harlem, I from the Lower East Side—drawn together by chance, we followed each other with no particular reason, and what felt like nothing quietly became something.

July 7, 2025July 11, 2025

Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in July 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

Installation view, Michael Pribich at Transmitter

Pathways of migration, transit, turbulence, and foundational knowledge lead us across the city through three boroughs that speak to time and reflection. Through the slightest gestures cleverly calculated by the selected artists, we can trace symbolic movements as indicative of something greater and inherently profound. This lineup is a reminder to delve into one’s humanity and to mine for empathy and change. These themes are as relevant today as they were long ago, and it’s important to acknowledge the work of artists who are using their talents to envision an equitable world for all. Let us carry forth this mindset so that the present we build is a true path forward towards a more mindful future.

July 3, 2025July 1, 2025

The Time It Takes to Look: Jaqueline Cedar’s Art of the Almost Seen

Jaqueline Cedar, *Dusk*, 2024, acrylic on panel, 10”x8”

At Andrew Rafacz, Jaqueline Cedar’s Slide delivers small paintings with big temporal ambition. In her first Chicago solo show, the artist captures time not as a line but a loop—blurred, fragmented, and thick with atmosphere. Figures flicker in and out of clarity; gestures repeat like memories misfiring. The intimacy of scale invites close-contact peering, while layered forms resist quick comprehension. It’s a slow burn of perceptual dissonance, pitched somewhere between deep dreaming and déjà vu. In many ways, Cedar paints observation itself—its rhythms, glitches, and gaps—inviting us to dwell in the space between glancing and seeing.

July 2, 2025July 1, 2025

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at Montclair Art Museum

Installation view. Photographer Peter Jacobs

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at the Montclair Art Museum is an extensive survey of 46 works from throughout the artist’s career curated by Mary Birmingham. Carter is known for her boundless abstractions and innovative works on mylar. This long-awaited show reflects Carter’s long history with the museum, the community, and the town itself. As one enters the show, the first piece is a video titled The Weight from the pandemic days, where Carter films herself balancing various pieces of her two-dimensional painting as more pieces get “stacked” onto the main mass. Setting the mood for the show, it not only introduces Nanette Carter in flesh but also important themes she has been working on throughout her career.

July 1, 2025June 27, 2025

Feeling the Onslaught of the Moment at Field of Play

Lauren Clark, Four Points Round, oil, acrylic, cotton mesh, copper, glass beads, iron, malachite, 40 x 20 inches

The exhibition at Field of Play gallery titled Onslaught of the Moment was wonderful, intriguing and timely all in one. The gallery’s exhibitions are always deeply considered and engaging, even within a smaller space, the works all shine and carry with them quite the presence. The shows are always curated with care, and this exhibition was no exception. Curated by Kate Sherman, the works of Lauren Clark, Masie Love, and Brian Karlsson each traverse space and show a progression of both time and experience through each artist’s process.

June 23, 2025June 18, 2025

ARCOlisboa 2025 and Lisbon’s Renaissance

Lisbon in May presents itself as both majestic and enigmatic, its urban landscape punctuated by clusters of jacaranda trees in full bloom, casting cascades of purple blossoms across streets and sky like botanical fireworks. The city’s legendary seven hills form a natural amphitheater overlooking the Tagus River, creating an endless choreography of ascent and descent through Escher-like topographies. Glossy marble cobblestones snake through a labyrinth of narrow streets, flanked by stately yet sometimes weathered palaces and residential buildings adorned with brightly colored azulejo tiles that catch and reflect the city’s crystalline light, making the entire urban fabric shimmer.

June 19, 2025June 15, 2025

UNBIND: FIGURING THE LAYERS OF BEING with the New York Studio School

Upon entering the exhibition I was struck at the presence every artist’s work had. While every piece was quite different from one another, they all shared similar conversations and offered viewers the opportunity to question human experience, histories, intimacy versus public viewing, and dealing with what it means to feel human. With nine artists, and diverse mediums, the complexities of being are shown clearly and each artist has their own take on “layers of being”.

June 16, 2025June 15, 2025

The Treasure Below Grand

ISammy Bennett, *Above Grand (Echoes of Language as Code),* 2025, photo courtesy of Flaneurshan Studio

Where Air Turns to Fog at Below Grand, curated by Ray Hwang, gathers Sammy Bennett, Anna Gregor, and Jesse Ng in a sometimes cheeky, but overall multivalent and sincere, investigation of visual perception and the machinery of capital-F/capital-A Fine Art presentation. With his characteristic casual abandon, Hwang exploits the gallery’s awkward architecture to its full potential, letting Bennett install an upside-down trompe-l’œil “group show” in the street-facing walk-in window display while reserving the closet-sized back room for a collection of Gregor and Ng’s paintings.